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Tycho: In my grief, I paid a mad scientist twenty million for a cybernetic replica of my dead wife. It was my wish that it look, feel, and behave just as she did. Gabe: Is that it? Tycho: Yeah. Gabe: That's just a bucket on roller-skates. Tycho: It really wasn't a good investment. Penny Arcade
In realistic settings, this could be an orphan taken in by a parent who has recently lost a child (to death, relocation, etc). In a sci-fi setting, the typical trope is the lonely scientist who creates a robot, android, artificial intelligence, clone, or robot-clone in the image of the deceased (probably first seen in this form in the classic Metropolis). Often it's a Robot Girl or Robotic Spouse.
If the Replacement Goldfish is unlucky, they constantly live in the shadow of the dead person and feel they can't measure up, which can also be the secret disappointment of the Mad Scientist.
When a lonely Evilutionary Biologist fills the void by cloning himself, he is a Truly Single Parent.
Not to be confused with the Doppelganger Replacement Love Interest or the Dead Pet Sketch.
Examples
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Anime
- Nuku Nuku from All Purpose Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nuku is not quite a Replacement Goldfish, in that the scientist takes the brain of the cat he struck in an accident and resurrects it in the body of a hyper-powered, incredibly cute cybernetic cat-brained girl.
- Astro Boy, a replacement for the son Doctor Tenma lost, who died in a car accident playing with a robotic car that Doctor Tenma gave him to make up for the fact that he was so obsessed with developing a super-robot, that he forgot to pay attention to his son. In one version, he was about to apologize for neglecting his son when he got the news.
- Now the incredible super-powers? If you're going to make a robot son, you want it to be the best robot ever! And not get hit by a car. And have machine guns in its ass. And he already had the plans mostly finished...
- Well, this time his son is not going to be run over by anything short of an imperial battlecruiser.
- Though, for some reason, in the original, the Doctor gets freaked out that his son, a robot, doesn't grow up. In other words, he got surprised that his robotic goldfish couldn't swim.
- Of course, even though Tenma gets freaked out, he still helps Astro off and on and off again (see one example in the "World's Strongest Robot" story-arc and its remake, Urasawa Naoki's Pluto). And then in the 2003 version, Tenma becomes the stalker dad.
- In the movie he decides to accept Astro as a different, but equally valid son. Freakin' finally, dude.
- Pictured above: Honey Kisaragi in Cutey Honey, a robotic replica / partial clone of the daughter that Dr. Kisaragi lost. She was specifically told by her father that she was her own person, though.
- In the first Full Metal Alchemist series, Majihal creates simulacra of his lost love interest from years ago. Turns out she was alive, but he had become so obsessed with perfecting his ideal android that he refused to accept an average-looking middle-aged woman as the genuine article. Alchemist Sho Tucker also is obsessed with using human transmutation to recreate his lost daughter, whom he "killed" by using as ingredients in a transmutation experiment, which then died. (In addition, this is pretty much the reason anyone creates homunculi; the ones made for reasons other than replacing dead loved ones are exceptions.) There are also two Replacement Goldfish relationships that complement and parallel each other. The orphaned Elric brothers take on their alchemy teacher Izumi as a mother figure, while Izumi herself had a stillborn child and now accepts the Elrics as surrogate children.
- Considering the result is pretty consistently a pus-oozing, organ pile, sin against God, you'd think people'd learn eventually.
- In one Brotherhood OVA, the Elric brothers encounter a rich couple that lost their daughter and apparently succeded in transmuting her back, as they see the girl completely healthy, but it turns out that unsurprisingly the transmutation had failed, and the couple lied to the alchemist (who lost his eyes as payment) to make him believe he succeded, and the girl was in reality an orphan they adopted because of her uncanny resemblance to their late daughter.
- Rei Ayanami from Neon Genesis Evangelion is party cloned from DNA from Gendo Ikari's wife, Yui, and is therefore Gendo's replacement goldfish for Yui. She have also died and been resurrected twice, which would make her a replacement goldfish for herself, and she is the surrogate host for the soul of Lilith because she has no soul of her own. Furthermore, Ritsuko considers herself to be a substitute of sorts for Rei. Meanwhile, Gendo considers Ritsuko a substitute for her mother Naoko, however, his feelings for both of them were equally cynical in nature. He didn't love either of them so much as he needed access their skill sets and one was just as good as the other. The Dummy Plugs, which are intended to replace pilots, are based on Rei and Kaworu's personalitie. And don't even get started on the whole thing with Kaji, Misato, and Misato's father, because the implications will require Brain Bleach.
- Rei could also be considered Gendo's replacement for Shinji. In one of his angry inner rants, Shinji even says as much. The fact that Rei was the name Gendo had planned on giving Shinji, if he had been born as a girl, seems to support this.
- An old man in the anime of Rozen Maiden convinced himself the boyish doll Souseiseki was his child, Kazuki, and went so far as to dress her in boy's clothing.
- More like that he probably chose her because she wore boy's clothing in the first place. She wears the same outfit in flashbacks from long before she met the old man, best seen in Overture.
- Variation: Fate Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha was a "short-term" replacement for the villainess' daughter, whom said villainess was attempting to resurrect. Fate's inability to mimic this daughter led to much suffering on her part.
- In the Pokemon short story "The Birth of Mewtwo", the scientist who was working on Mewtwo was attempting to recreate his daughter. He was successful only in creating a clone that would live for only a year in a tank.
- Pokemon also features Jessie attempting (and of course, failing) to train a Ditto to become a replacement goldfish for an ex-boyfriend.
- There's also Jessibelle, James's psychotic would-be fiancé who looks identical to Jessie. It's a slight subversion as James drifted toward a life of crime (and to Jessie) more out of spite for Jessibelle.
- In The Big O anime, R. Dorothy Wainwright was an android created as a surrogate for the deceased daughter of her creator.
- Likewise Naomi Armitage in Armitage III.
- In Chobits, Minoru's persocom Yuzuki, a replacement for his sister (whom you might recognize as Kaede from Kidou Tenshi Angelic Layer).
- It should be noted, though, that he eventually understands what he is doing to Yuzuki and decides to stop updating his sister's personality into her. Also, the whole thing might be insane if it came from a scientist with no interest for ethics, but it's understandable since he's a lonely 12-year-old who needs some kind of emotional protector.
- Inverted in AIR. Minagi's mother has been traumatized by her miscarriage and thinks that Minagi is the dead baby and there was no older child, leaving Minagi to live as "Michiru" at home. Minagi's relationship with her mother deteriorates along with her mother's mental state, and she starts blaming herself for the baby's fate.
- Nataku in X1999 is the botched, emotionless, genderless clone of the resident mad scientist's dead daughter.
- In Touka Gettan, Yomiko considers Touka to be her dead daughter.
- Eris did this with her dead love Rezo, giving us Copy Rezo.
- Suzu in Hotori - Tada Saiwai o Koinegau is a robot replacement for a couple who has recently lost their son to illness, and struggles with the question of whether he has an identity of his own. The "doctor" who's overseeing the process of implanting the dead boy's memories into Suzu also has a terminally ill daughter, but (perhaps wisely) decides against getting a Replacement Goldfish because he's got enough experience with the robot doubles to know that however good the replacement is, it will never really be her.
- There's a trace of this in Sonic X where Shadow the Hedgehog, despite his current outright abhorrence of humans, chooses to save Chris Thorndyke from an exploding island after envisioning him as Maria Robotnik (it's all the eyes, apparently). Somewhat subverted as it does not stop him from bashing the kid about a bit several episodes on.
- Is it still Replacement Goldfish if, in Kodomo no Jikan, the female lead (age 9-10) is being raised up by her guardian (her mother's lover/cousin) to be a replacement for said dead lover? Even to the Squickable point of leaving hickeys on the back of her neck?
- Played with in the second season of Gundam 00. Neil Dylandy, the original Lockon Stratos, has a twin brother named Lyle, who eventually takes up his brother's place as Lockon in Celestial Being. He grew into being his own person by acting like as much of a Jerkass as he could when he first came to Celestial Being, purposely failing to deliver during battle, and refusing to feel vengeful when everyone expected him to. Only later does he actually put his heart into filling his dead brother's shoes, and it was when he was trying to save Katatron, the group for whom he was acting as a double agent. Later, he says that as a child he had himself sent to boarding school to get away from the comparisons, and he laments the fact that he will never live Neil down.
- An episode of The Third features the superweapon Gravestone, whose creator made in the image of his dead son and ended up trying not to use it for that reason.
- In H2O Footprints In The Sand, Hinata is a Replacement Goldfish for her own sister. Her older sister, the real Hinata, drowned, and the family forced Hotaru to replace her, telling everyone that Hotaru had died instead.
- In Pet Shop Of Horrors, an early chapter of the manga which became the first episode of the anime involves the Count selling a "rabbit" to a pair of distraught parents - a "rabbit" who looks exactly like their dead daughter, Alice. They take her in and treat her exactly the same as their own daughter, with disastrous results. It turns out that the "rabbit", when fed sweets, "gives birth to" (is eaten from within by) dozens of killer rabbits, each of which go forth, kill, eat, and "give birth" to more killer bunnies until the town is overrun.
- Quite a few Petshop Of Horrors chapters deal with D giving a pet as a replacement for a lost child, spouse, or family member. Almost all of them appear human to the owners and (thankfully) they don't all end like Alice the Rabbit did. In one chapter, D is visited by a man whose famous fiancee just died and gives him a mermaid that looks just like her...a mermaid which enchants and seduces him before devouring him. Another chapter has Leon's younger brother Chris bond with a Maya bird which appears in the form of Chris and Leon's deceased mother, giving both a chance for emotional release before finally dying of old age. In fact, it was in that chapter that D comments on how the pets in his shop will deliberately take the form and role of whomever the owners want, including lost loved ones.
- In Sola, we find out that the protagonist, Yorito, is actually a replacement made out of paper by Aono to replace the REAL Yorito, who died sometime in the feudal era in a landslide. Using her paper manipulation abilities as a yaka, she basically planted dead!Yorito's personality and memories into origami!Yorito. The whole thing is a bit disturbing when you think about it.
- Shiina in Narutaru gets to be this in a very strange way in the manga. She's a replacement for herself after she is killed by a fighter jet; it's basically the handiwork of her real Mon, the Earth itself, because she still has to fulfill her role in what will become of the world.
- Not to mention that if you believe the theory that Shiina drowned in the very first chapter, the Shiina we see throughout most of the manga is a replacement of that Shiina. And it's possible that there were other examples even before then. You gotta love Narutaru.
- In Cosmo Warrior Zero, the new first mate, Marina Oki, looks EXACTLY like Captain Zero's late wife.
- The Manwha (and movie) My Sassy Girl is about a man who meets a seemingly deranged woman who forces him to act like her deceased lover ("No soda, coffee!"). By coincidence, the dead lover is the man's cousin.
- Sharem in Immortal Rain is so into her Replacement Goldfish son that she has no issues with his...eccentricities or his views on humanity.
- The second season of Code Geass has Rolo, who was inserted into Lelouch's modified memories by Emperor Charles as part of a backup plan should Lelouch ever realize who he truly is.
- In Fruits Basket, Yuki sees Tohru as a replacement mother figure.
- A story in Mermaid Saga has Mana and Yuta meet a woman and her young son who turn out to both be immortal and been together since World War II. Turns out the boy isn't the woman's biological child. He became immortal first and offered her a chance to eat the mermaid's flesh and be with him. She accepted because her own child died and saw the boy as a replacement.
- In the Full Metal Panic novels, this can be a rather disturbing (and possibly implied) view of the two (male) twins Gauron took in. It's revealed that Gauron had actually wanted to lure and take Sousuke in the first time he saw him, giving him a "dark smile" (read: rapeface), and later even coming out and saying that his plans for Sousuke had been less than pure (hint: it involves buttrape). Later, Gauron ends up taking in two male twins he tells Sousuke "were quite similar to you." It gets worse: The twins are both Asian (like Sousuke), and they are described using similar terms to Sousuke's physical looks ("slender" build, around the same age, with a similar sort of haircut, and one of the twins even uses the same kind of gun Sousuke normally uses - the same kind of automatic pistol, which was also why Kaname knew how that gun worked better than if he had been using a different kind).
- Happens twice in Rah Xephon. The two main leads, Ayato and Haruka, inadvertently seek out Replacement Goldfish for one another after they're separated across time by the arrival of the Mulians. Haruka starts dating Ayato's twin brother, and Ayato becomes infatuated with a girl who's actually a spirit that's adopted the guise of Haruka. Eventually, they are reunited and everything is set right with the help of the titular Giant Mecha.
- Game X Rush features the 'replacement child' type, with Miyuki's damaged mind believing that Yuuki was her son, Memori... and that anyone who tried to say differently was clearly trying to take memori from her, and thus should be stabbed until they're dead.
Comic Books
- Y The Last Man averts this in the Distant Finale. Yorick refuses to even consider the offer implied by theories concerning 'bringing back' any number of dead women and a sample of 355's hair.
- Played rather straight in the same series' penultimate chapter when Dr. Matsumori is revealed to have used his estranged daughter's tissue samples in the hopes of being a proper father to her this time around. Alison Mann (neé Atsuko Matsumori) is annoyed over it, but she did not like the guy anyway, even before finding out he had sabotaged her own cloning project out of sheer ego.
- Spygirl, the Japanese knockoff of Spyboy, is/has an entire assembly line of Replacement Goldfish for herself. The Japanese spies don't understand why the Americans put so much effort into Spyboy if they were only going to make one. Her one solo story ends with the current model getting this explained to her via a flashback explaining a picture of her she doesn't remember taking ending with the Spygirl in the picture dying and being replaced with her. She's then drugged to forget the whole thing and has the photo taken away, with her superior who's been flashbacking remarking that if she figures it out again she can always be replaced.
- Painkiller Jane suffers from the same issue.
- A significant problem in Spider Man and Mary Jane's marriage, is that M.J often had the problem of feeling like she couldn't measure up to Spidey's first love, Gwen Stacey. But hey, it's not like THAT'S a problem any more!
- Hell, it was shown in House Of M that his hearts desire is to be married to Gwen and to a father a kid with her.
- Part of the reason Jason Todd went nuts after his resurrection was because he thought Batman just replaced him without question. The other part was that Jason's killer was still alive.
- In many ways Jason was just a replacement for Dick which only added to the resentment he felt.
Film
Literature
- The classic literary example, pleasantly twisty, would have to be Rebecca.
- Ethan of Athos: Terrance brings his wife's corpse to the best scientists money can buy and asks them to revive her. They can't, but offer to create a clone identical to Janine in looks, personality, and mannerisms - perhaps even with a few improvements. Terrance declines, but he does have the scientists splice her DNA into donor ovaries so that he can have thousands or millions of Janine's babies.
- Averted with prejudice in the same series's Mirror Dance, by both Miles' and his mother Cordelia's emphatic refusal to treat Miles's clone Mark as anything but Miles' brother. One of the reasons for this is that in the setting, most civilized societies with cloning technology treat a clone as legally either the child of the person who originally commissioned its creation, or the sibling of the clone's genetic progenitor.
- In Forever Amber, the heroine Amber marries the creepy, elderly Earl of Radclyffe. It turns out he's attracted to her because of her resemblance to his long-lost love, Judith, and even has Amber wear Judith's wedding gown. Neither Radclyffe nor Amber realize that Judith was Amber's mother.
- In Double Identity, Bethany was cloned from her parents' deceased daughter Elizabeth.
- My Sweet Audrina by V.C Andrews has an odd twist to this trope. Audrina, the title character, is a girl living in the constant shadow of her elder sister who had died nine years before she was born, and her parents have absolutely no qualms about letting their daughter know that she was born and raised for the sole purpose of replacing her dead sister. But as it turns out, Audrina and her sister are one and the same. Audrina had a very sheltered life and, on one of the few times she was allowed to walk home without an escort, she was attacked and raped. She managed to get home safe and sound, but after a few suicide attempts her father forced her into electro-convulsive therapy in order to erase her memory of the event, and many of her supposed mental problems, as well as the personality defects her parents are constantly trying to fix, are caused by the initial treatment and the constant confusion her parents keep her in to maintain the amnesia. And, as it turns out, that's only one of her problems...
- Tarzan was the replacement for his ape mother's dead infant.
- In Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts novel Only In Death, after Caffran's death, Dalin Criid is slotted into his father's place in the Ghosts. He bitterly resents it but is aware that he can do nothing to stop it.
- Elizabeth-Jane Newson/Henchard in The Mayor of Casterbridge.
- Harry Potter to Sirius Black. Harry's strong physical resemblance to his father James makes him a substitute for his best friend when Sirius escaped prison. This causes some tension between the two in the text when Harry is revealed to be less daring than James and Sirius is unable to handle it appropriately (saying things like "you're not so like your father at all" and "the danger is what would have made it fun for James" (paraphrasing)), and is reflected also in the film version when Sirius actually calls Harry by James' name in the battle scene where he dies. This Replacement Goldfish situation is also what prevents Sirius from being the father figure that Harry desires, and Harry from being the best friend that Sirius desires, neither are able to fully transition into the Godfather/Godson relationship because of their inability to get past the physical similarities that James and Harry had. Harry can't be the James that Sirius remembers because he never knew him, and Sirius can't be the father that Harry craves because he's trapped by the trauma of his youth.
- Sansa Stark is apparently one of this for her mother Cat's Unlucky Childhood Friend, Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish in A Song Of Ice And Fire.
- In Jessica, Ruthie seems to have a rather odd version of this. Her Imaginary Friend, Jessica, is her constant companion, always eager to play whatever game Ruthie devises and willing to take the blame for Ruthie's actions. Ruthie's parents are unamused and do not play along. Shortly before starting kindergarten, they suggest that Jessica should stay home. Ruthie of course takes her along anyway. After spending the majority of the day homesick and unhappy with only Jessica for companionship, Ruthie is approached by a girl volunteering to be her partner. Ruthie, unsure, brightens up considerably when the girl's name happens to be Jessica. Soon they are best friend, illustrations showing them happily doing all the activities that Ruthie and the first Jessica enjoyed.
Live Action TV
- Monk featured a literal replacement goldfish. Natalie's daughter Julie had a goldfish given to her by her father who was subsequently killed in combat. Natalie replaces the goldfish so that the daughter won't lose this emotional link to her father.
- Denji Sentai Megaranger has Shibolena who was created as Samejima Shizuka. Though it is eventually reveal that she is shizuka herself who was transform into cyborg to be alive once again. I mean how could she use her own DNA to create baranejire if she wasn't human?
- K9 from Doctor Who was created by Professor Marius to replace the the dog he couldn't take to his new home, Titan.
- Also used with K9 in a later episode; after bidding farewell to Leela and K9, the Doctor immediately takes out a box marked "K9 Mark II".
- And again in the new series with K9 Mark IV being given to Sarah Jane Smith immediately after the heroic sacrifice of K9 Mark III.
- Also in the Doctor Who episode, Journey's End, when Rose must return to the alternate universe she was trapped in for two years, The Doctor gives her a replacement copy created when He transferred his regeneration energy into his severed hand, and Donna touched it, creating a second Doctor
- Also, [[in the Doctor's Daughter, Jenny could be seen as a replacement goldfish to his family on Galifrey, which he remarked previously that they had died]]
- In Dark Angel, Max is eventually informed by her former commander and father figure, Donald Lydecker, who has been hunting her and the other escaped X5s for a long time, that her genetic code contains DNA preserved from his dead wife. She is not an exact duplicate, "more like inspired by".
- In Star Trek The Next Generation, Dr. Noonien Soong replaced his wife with an android (with her memories), despite the fact that she was going to divorce him. He went to such extreme measures to make her seem human, even the most advanced technological equipment and everyone she ever met except Data couldn't tell the difference.
- Data himself is arguably a replacement for Lore.
- Battlestar Galactica: This is the origin of the Cylon Centurions. Replace a goldfish (namely your dead daughter), set in motion the end of your civilization.
- Oh, and Cavil was made in the image of Ellen's father.
- All the human models seem to be Ellen and Tigh's replacement children and/or the Final Five's replacement PEOPLE.
- In a more realistic version, Supernatural had Dean replace his dead mother by looking after both his father and his brother when he shouldn't have had to. And we all know how well that turned out.
- Hamish Macbeth: The episode "Wee Jock's Lament" has the title character's dog, Jock, run over and killed at the beginning of the episode. At the end of the episode, he ends up receiving another dog of the same breed as a reward for solving the crime of the week—and he names it Jock.
- Heroes: As of the most recent season finale, Sylar has become one for Nathan Petrelli, complete with his memories being wiped and replaced with those of Nathan, his shapeshifting ability being used to turn him into a lookalike of Nathan (which, since he doesn't remember that he can shapeshift, leaves him effectively mode-locked), and the burning of a fake Sylar body to convince him that Sylar is most definitely dead for good. Of course, that still leaves the hunger that made Gabriel Gray into Sylar in the first place...
- A mad scientist in one episode of Sliders was in fact his robotic replica without even knowing it.
- Fringe, It looks like Peter Bishop is one, that the Peter of this reality died as a child and that in his grief Walter, his Mad Scientist father, built a reality hopping device and dragged an alt-reality Peter into this world as a replacement.
- "Hi. I'm Larry. This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl." On Newhart, you didn't even have to be adopted to be a Replacement Goldfish.
- In the Dollhouse episode "Man on the Street" (1x06) an Internet billionaire, Joel Mynor, uses Echo as a replacement for his dead wife Rebecca, but only once a year - the anniversary of her death in a car crash on her way to the new house Joel bought when he finally hit it big in business. Later, toward the end of "A Love Supreme" (2x08), Echo - who now can control the 40 personalities in her brain - briefly becomes "Rebecca" for the last time to give her blessing to Joel's remarriage.
- In the episode "Instinct" (2x02) another Rich Dude rents Echo as a longer-term replacement for his wife and mother of his infant child; again, the client's wife had died too young (in this case of complications from the birth).
- In That Mitchell And Webb Look, Dreamy Pastures Insurance offers as a life insurance policy to replace your dead loved one with someone "prettier and kinder", usually in the Russian bride mold.
- The golem in The X Files episode Kaddish is also a replacement goldfish, specifically created by the fiancee of an assassinated man to "play" him in a fake wedding.
- Juliet from Lost is made into this twice, both times by Ben. The first time, he tries to use her as a replacement goldfish for Jack's ex-wife Sarah to further his Mind Screw on him. Then again before that, for himself as a replacement goldfish for his MIA childhood sweetheart Annie.
- Aaron Stone (the series, not the character) is essentially meant to be this for the long running Power Rangers franchise, especially considering what had been going on with RPM.
- Dewey did this in an episode of Malcolm In The Middle with, indeed, a goldfish.
- It is hinted the The Sarah Connor Chronicles that Allison Young and Future!John have a relationship, and that Cameron may be her replacement in more ways than one...
Tabletop Games
- In the storyline for the Magic The Gathering set Planeshift, Yawgmoth (the Big Bad) grants Crovax (the Dragon) a Replacement Goldfish for his lost love, Selenia. Later Crovax lures Gerrard (the main protagonist) to the dark side with false promises of a Replacement Goldfish of his own, though Gerrard sees through the ruse in time. It is unclear whether Crovax realizes that his Selenia Mark II is not the genuine article.
Video Games
- In the anime and videogame of Xenosaga the character of MOMO was an Artificial Human reconstruction of her creator's daughter, Sakura.
- He went a little further than that, Momo being the 100th Replacement Goldfish he created in a full scale production line of androids with her face. His wife on the other hand was none too pleased with seeing a hundred copies of her dead daughter running about the galaxy and mentioned as much.
- Something of an unusual example, as MOMO and the others were originally only meant to replace part of Sakura, as she suffered from a disease similar to Locked In Syndrome and MOMO was meant to become a new body for her. It was only after the poor kid bit it that Mizrahi decided to go the whole hog and use MOMO as a full Replacement Goldfish.
- This becomes a Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming in the third game when Mizrahi tells MOMO that he had long since accepted that he would never get his daughter back, and had truly grown to love his 'second daughter' as a completely separate being.
- Scores more heartwarming when Juli herself accepts this fact too.
- In Baldurs Gate II, the Big Bad tried to clone his long-lost love. It ended badly.
- Subversion: In Sam and Max: Season 1, Sam and Max actually get a replacement goldfish, and they worry he'll find out.
- In Season Two, the Goldfish dies, and returns from Hell to kill them. They replace him in their office with a stone replica naming it as the prophesied leader of the sea chimpanzees.
- In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, the Riku Replica engineered by Vexen realizes he's a copy (but considers himself better than the real Riku). That is, until Namine modifies his memories so he thinks he is Riku.
- In the Rockman EXE / Megaman Battle Network series, Rockman/Megaman was made by Netto/Lan's father FROM his dead son Saito/Hub. In later games, this is spoken of casually. This is also the reason Netto/Lan can use his Eleventh Hour Superpower.
- The sequel series, Ryuusei no Rockman / Mega Man Star Force, the robot Empty/Hollow is a replacement for the Big Bad Orihime/Vega's dead husband. Ironically, she never pays proper attention to him because he isn't an exact copy, but he ends up developing a soul and falling for her.
- In the Nintendo DS game Professor Layton And The Curious Village, Lady Dahlia is a robot, like everyone else in St. Mystere except for Flora. She was created by Baron Reinhold to be a replacement for his dead wife. However, her existence as a replacement for the dead wife was so traumatic to his daughter that he had the robot's memory wiped and the Lady Dahlia personality created instead.
- Silent Hill example: Maria, who was born from James' wish to be with his dead wife Mary.
- According to the enemy notes, and her appearance, in Mother 3, Lil' Miss Marshmallow was built by Porky to replace his human maid, Electra from the previous game (Earthbound), who he apparently had a crush on and who he could no longer be with due to Time Travel problems.
- This is the backstory behind the Prismriver Sisters from Touhou Project. A long time ago, a man named Count Prismriver had four daughters, but he tragically died and the sisters were orphaned. Each went their separate ways, but the youngest couldn't bear to part with her sisters, so she created three poltergeists with the appearances and personalities of her sisters.
- This is also the backstory of Seihou's (Touhou Project's 'sister' series) main character Vivit; Erich, the developer of Saboten energy, suffered an accident while trying to manipulate or test it; said accident has severely injured him, forcing him to survive as a cyborg, and has taken his daughter's life. Thus, Vivit was created by him as a replacement for his daughter.
- In Rogue Galaxy, Steve was created as a replacement of sorts for Dr. Pocacchio's son Mark, and apparently has some of Mark's thoughts in his neural network.
- This becomes glaringly obvious when you play the prequel to Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, when you realise that all of that cool stuff Cloud did? Zack did it first, and Aeris noticed.
- In Knights Of The Old Republic you have the option to help a woman get back her droid. As it turns out, he became a replacement husband for her. In a lot of ways. If you find him, he asks you to end his misery. "Wow. She really misses her droid, doesn't she?"
- Super Paper Mario lets you buy Tiptron in place of Tippi/Timpani after you lose her to Count Bleck/Blumiere. You'll want to do so more likely than not.
- Mona, the protagonist of A Vampyre Story, is the latest in a protracted line of Replacement Goldfish for the villain, Shrowdy von Keifer. After his mother vanished, he went a little goony (well, moreso than usual-the dialog is peppered with implications that even before the Baroness disappeared, Shrowdy was everything wrong with mama's boys) and started kidnapping young women and keeping them in his castle. It's stated once or twice that Mona's been around the longest of all of them because she bears an uncanny resemblance to the missing Baroness.
- The Japan only NES game Moon Crystal. Ricky is aided by a mysterious girl named Rosina who claims to be the daughter of Count Crimson. It is later revealed that Rosina is in fact an automated corpse, she died long ago and Crimson used the Moon Crystal to bring her back to a half-life state.
Web Comics
Western Animation
- Danielle in Danny Phantom was created as an imperfect clone of the main character (not only physically younger and female, but with an unstable body). She was a stepping stone on the way to creating a perfected clone, and when she found out, turned into a Tykebomb.
- Odd spin: In Transformers: Beast Wars, Megatron had a habit of making replacement Dinobots.. An organic one was made after he defected to the good guys and the transmetal Dinobot II after his Heroic Sacrifice. Megatron seemed pleased with these clones (Dinobot II was basically his second in command), except when they followed their template's footsteps a little too closely.
- In Disney's Tarzan, the titular character was adopted by Kala who recently lost her baby to Sabor.
- In Avatar The Last Airbender, Iroh begins treating Zuko like a son after his own child, Lu Ten, dies in battle. He seems to love Zuko for who he is, however, and doesn't project Lu Ten onto him.
- This trope is evoked with Zuko and Katara's relationship when they reconcile, with Katara basically being a sane version of Zuko's little sister Azula. But like the above example, Zuko doesn't project Azula into Katara;she simply fills the emotional void left due to his biological younger sibling being unable to have a loving, healthy relationship with him. The writers didn't heavily go into this aspect of the friendship(perhaps due to lack of time), but it is there, much to the annoyance of the rabid Canon!Zutarians.
- It gets weirder when you consider that due to Zuko being a descendent of Avatar Roku, in a cosmic sense, Katara's technically his great grandma.
- In The Venture Bros the accident-prone titular brothers have killed themselves numerous times, only to be replaced by identical clones (with their memories implanted) every time, a major plot point at the begging of the second season. Sociopath Dr. Venture seems to think this is no big deal.
- When South Park killed Kenny For Real, the boys tried to make Butters dress in Kenny's coat and even called him Kenny until he stopped cooperating.
- Done by The Simpsons in a Halloween Special; Bart, the original goldfish, wakes from his coma, builds himself a robotic shell, and comes back for revenge. And then there's the time (widower) Flanders offers a bed for the night to an old flame...who wakes up to find Flanders cutting her hair to match Maude's.
- Subverted in Futurama. Yancy names his first son Philip after his long, lost brother (Philip Fry, but called Fry in the series), but not because he wants Philip II to replace Fry, but because he wants Philip to be able to accomplish all the things that his older brother wanted to do, but never did. Yet... Philip goes on to accomplish all these things.
- Both of them do, actually.
- In AnimalsofFarthingWood refusing to except the fact that his friend Mole died Badger mistakes his son Mossy for him because he looked just like him, he eventually dies without learning the truth that Mole had long since died and that he'd been talking to his son the whole time.
Real Life
- This has been a major problem with divorced families with teenaged kids still living at home. The mother unconsciously starts treating her son as a replacement husband or the father unconsciously treats his daughter as a replacement wife, sexually and emotionally. The poor kid ends up expected to provide adult advice and adult emotional support to a parent!
- A documentary about the children of Holocaust survivors (Jews, BBC Four, June 2008) featured a woman who had survived Auschwitz but whose young daughter had been gassed there. Later she settled in Britain, remarried and had another daughter, who was named after the first one.
- It was once fairly common to name a baby after its deceased sibling. The artist Vincent van Gogh was named after a brother who'd died one year before his own birth.
- As was Salvador Dalí.
- This practice was actually used as a plotpoint in Beethoven's Last Night
- Nelson Mandela did this with his daughters.
- Peter Sellers' birth name was Richard Henry, but his parents nicknamed him Peter, the name of their short-lived first child. Eventually he adopted that name as his own. This has not passed without ironic comment, given his later claims that he could only be his characters and never himself.
- It was even once fairly common (and might still be...) to name a child after what the parents would've called a stillborn or aborted baby had it lived. Have fun in therapy, kid!
- Someone explain why this is bad; does the baby having died make the name unlucky or something? It never got used and it's still a perfectly good name. What's wrong?
- What's wrong? It makes researching the family tree a bitch, that's what's wrong. The number of dead infants with the same names as surviving siblings can make figuring out your (British) family history a royal pain. And that doesn't even begin to count the number of children with the same names as their parents.
- Because many, if not most, parents develop attachments to their infant or
unborn children fetus; the idea that a second child is just a replacement for the same affection instead of a wholly separate person is rather creepy.
- Probably because the parents may have a few lingering issues or something.
- In fact, current Ashkenazi Jewish custom is to avoid naming children after people who died young, or at least not using it as their primary name, out of fear it would bring bad luck and cause the new child to also die young.
- 'Course it was common when more than half your kids were definitely going to die before they turned five.
- Totally subverted in Mongolian culture, where if a couple's children keep on dying young, they would name the newborn something like 'Vicious Dog', 'Not This One', 'No Name', 'Not a Human Being', or give a female name to a boy. This was to make the evil spirits leave them alone, or to confuse the spirits.
- This actually got rather strange in cultures where there were rules on which relatives you named offspring after — names were heirlooms, passed down through the generations, and in some you could easily guess exactly what a couple's children would be named just from reading the family tree. (And yes, some basically did not count babies who were stillborn or died very soon after birth, either.) Talk about maximizing both the potential for Replacement Goldfish and confusion!
- In Maus Art Spiegelman touches on this point, describing some warped sibling rivalry he had with his brother Richieu, who died in the Holocaust before he was born.
- Specifically because his parents kept a large photograph of Richieu and then of course Art's own father calls him Richieu at the end of the book.
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